Monthly Archives: February 2011

Beating the Wings always feels pretty special compared to other wins in that you deserve a good ol’ pat on the back. This most recent one was no different.

And if I’m being honest, that just might have been Kari Lehtonen’s best game of the year. He completely deserved a shutout, but Holmstrom ( boo that whore) robbed him of it. Kari was amazing, yet he didn’t steal the game per se. They might not have won without him, but the Stars held their own. I especially liked what I saw from Mike Ribeiro and Adam Burish. It was an awkward moment when the Wings announcers analyzed Ribs’ shoulder pads.

Another player I saw playing well was Robidas. Well, Robi and Goligoski both, actually. It’s like having a new partner has invigorated Robi, and I like it. In fact, I just liked the entire game. Period.

You go, Sharkbait Your Nashville Recap

I didn’t actually watch this game, so I won’t say much. I just know that we won and who scored the goals. Which brings me to…

YOU GO SHARKBAIT.

For whatever reason, I’ve started calling Goligoski ‘Sharkbait.’ And I really have no idea why. When I first heard about the trade, I inexplicably thought of Finiding Nemo and the coronation scene where they’re all, “SHARKBAIT HOO HA HA.”

And so, this is Sharkbait. Yeah, cool right?

Anyway, wins are always nice, and today’s was worth a lot more than two points, it really was.

Just a fair warning, don’t be offended by my blatant Penguins hatred. It’s an irrational hate, but still a hatred nonetheless. However, I’ll be your friend if you’ll be my friend. My mantra is “Hate the team. Not the fan.”

I have mixed feelings about this trade. I feel depressed, reluctantly optimistic, angry, and stressed all in one. So, let’s get started, shall we?

I love James Neal, and I’m extremely sad to see him go. However, it’s not his hot-n-cold play that I’ll miss. No, it’s his lovely face I’ll miss most. It hurts so much to see a guy that I love go to my least favorite team in the world. That’s what put me in denial and made me look like this:

However…let’s face it: Neal has proven himself to be a one-trick pony who isn’t really good at backchecking, but doesn’t make up for it in scoring colossal numbers. We’ve waited and waited to see him reach his so-called potential, but it hasn’t happened, and it would have done no good to keep him around and wait even longer.

As for Matt Niskanen, I will truly miss taking out my frustration on him. Really, I will. I’ll miss his doofy goatee and that deer-in-the-headlights look he got every time he was forced to make a play. I’ll miss calling him Niskers and nearly having a heart attack when he does something correctly. However, I have one thing to say to the Penguins: he’s your problem now. YEAH I WENT THERE.

And one big positive that comes from all of this is that the Stars have freed up some cap space, which, you know, might mean good things on the B-Rad front. See, Neal would have been paid $3.5 million next year, so that’s a nice salary to get off the books.

As for the new guy, Goligoski, I’ll just wait and see. As a Penguins-hater I don’t watch many of their games, so I don’t really know anything about him. All I know is that he’s not as pretty as Nealer. And that’s a damn shame.

Welp, that’s it for now. I’m really curious to see how everything plays out.

Can we just forget about last night’s embarrassing loss to the Oilers? We kind of need to since the Stars play Calgary tonight on the second night of a back-to-back.

This recent slide has not been fun. In fact, it’s been positively painful. How is it that we were leading the Pacific and riding playoff dreams to this stumble? I don’t get it.

Something went wrong somewhere.

It could be the injuries. After having good luck with our health during the first half, the Stars have had a remarkably unlucky string of injuries since the All-Star break. Especially hurtful has been the loss of Jamie Benn. That kid is a MONSTER, and the Stars are really showing how much they depended on him. It doesn’t help that B-Rad is b-roken now.

Yeah that was kinda crazy cool, wasn’t it? The second and third periods I mean. Not that atrocious first.

I’ll admit that I gave up after the second goal went in; the third was the last straw. But they managed to pull their heads out of their asses and make a comeback.

You could say that it all started when Kari Lehtonen made this amazing save:

Also notable was Mark Fistric’s huge hit on Fernando Pisani:

Pisani was carted off, and now he has a headache on top of that pesky ulcerative colitis he already suffers from. It was not a malicious hit. Rather, I think it was just a bit of a freak hit, because Fishsticks had no way of knowing that Pisani would hit the top boards the way he did. But he hasn’t been suspended yet, so hold tight!

I would say that these two plays were vastly important in acheving the comeback. Both changed the momentum and allowed us to get back in it.

Having to comeback like that doesn’t exactly leave me feeling warm and fuzzy inside, but I’ll take it.

You guys! It’s been an emotionally taxing day, so please bear with me and my craziness.

I woke up this morning to find out that the Stars lost in overtime, which means, hey, they got a point! Just not two. Boo. It’s really disappointing, because the two periods that I saw looked decent. But oh well. At least we snapped the losing streak, though, right?

To continue a string of emotionally taxing things, Mike Fisher got traded today. I know, I know…insert Carrie Underwood joke here. But I really didn’t see that trade coming; it felt very out of the blue, even though we all knew it was inevitable that he’d be traded to Nashville. It just surprised me, that’s all.

However, the most emotionally hard thing I’ve had to deal with today doesn’t even have to do with hockey, and it’s actually kind of shallow. But, anywat, here goes the sad story…

I’m a huge fan of musicals, and Green Day’s American Idiot is my current favorite. What’s it about? Well, it tells the story of disaffected youths trying to live in Bush-era America to summarize as best as I can. It features a really amazing, super talented cast. Opening night was less than a year ago (April 20, 2010), and many of the original cast have already departed the show, most notable Mary Faber (who played the pregnant girlfriend, Heather), Theo Stockman (one of the main ensemble members), and Tony Vincent (the greatest St. Jimmy EVER).

Well…today it was announced that these two wonderful men, John Gallagher Jr. and Michael Esper, (the two at the front. Mary Faber and Tony Vincent are the other two in the photo) will be leaving…

I love these two rock stars so much, you don’t even know, especially Gallagher. It came as a complete shock today when Gallagher tweeted that he’s leaving (and promptly screwed up the time of his final show. That dork.).